(A journey through life set in Japan)

About

I’m a 38 year old America woman, and I have been married to a Japanese man (who is 40) since 2014. We currently reside in Japan. We both love food (especially awesome buffets), and we love to travel.

I started this blog in early 2016 because we decided we would try to start our family, and I was overwhelmed with emotions I had no outlet for. We started TTC using FAM (Fertility Awareness Method). I stopped birth control pills and will never take them again. (You can read about FAM basics on Kindara. They also have a great tracking app and a super supportive community.) The good news is that I got pregnant within the first six months of TTC. The bad news is that I lost the baby before I could even get to the doctor. From July to November (2016), I experienced a 132 day cycle. I saw a doctor in the US in November 2016 who diagnosed me with PCOS and said my only hope of having a baby would be to start immediately with IVF.

I have great fears of injecting ungodly amounts of chemicals into my body, so I told my husband I would prefer to adopt. To be honest 2016 was a really difficult year, and I fell into despair over never having a family with the man I love. At the tail end of 2016 we moved to a new city and I had to restart my life over again in Japan. To be honest 2017 was almost as difficult as 2016.

It took about a year to convince my very Japanese husband that adoption would be the best option for us. Japanese people are very concerned with bloodlines and their family registry. However, my husband came to see my point of view (that there are way too many children in Japan who need homes because very few Japanese people want to adopt them). In November 2017 we started the process to adopt locally. In December we we met with our local institution, they interviewed us, but it’s a long process before they will approve us to adopt with them. We also applied to adopt via an online NPO and other local NPOs. Basically TTC or adoption is playing the game every hopeful mother and father hate Hurry Up and Wait.

In early January 2018, I unexpectedly got a positive pregnancy test even though we hadn’t been actively trying. I had multiple ultrasounds, and saw a heartbeat on two separate occasions. This pregnancy was continually monitored. I began to prepare for having a baby. I bought maternity clothes and baby items for the first time. I was so hopeful. Unfortunately, history repeated itself. The embryo died at just 7 weeks and didn’t continue to grow any more. Heartbroken, devastated and completely shattered are the only words to describe this experience.

Now I don’t even know where to go from here.

Initially, this blog started as a place for me to write about all the ups and downs that came with TTC. The more I wrote, the more the blog evolved. It became a place for me to write about not only the struggles of TTC but the daily struggles of someone with depression and mild anxiety and later adoption. It became a place for me to share a little bit of my Japan with you.

My blog became a place to talk about the wonderful relationships I’ve developed with people not only in Japan but also around the world. It became a place to remind myself that I have been lucky in life to have made friends with some of the best of the best.

Also, this blog became a place to help me figure out who I am, who I’ll become, and what will make me happiest in the future. See I strongly believe that every person in this world in an incomplete person. Perhaps we’ll never be fully complete people because the universe is constantly introducing us to people who add value to our lives. I’m okay with that especially if I’m not done meeting people who will change my life in exciting and amazing and even frightening ways. Mostly, that’s where the title of this blog comes from (and from this post).

(If you feel so inclined you can read more about me here, here, or here. The first link focuses on me and mental health, and the second two focus on TTC.)

Thank you for stopping by to share in my journey. I appreciate your support, your likes, your comments, and whatever else you do here.

7 thoughts on “About”

Responding to PP, Interestly, recommending beer, such as traditional home fermented beers, or small batch brew, kinda makes sense, since it can help renew/balance the healthy bacteria in your gut. Which would in fact help your stomach heal as well as improve other functions of the body. Now I don’t know if that would apply to commercial brew since they probably pasturise for regulation requirements, which would essentially kill all the good bacteria used to ferment it int the first place.

I read several of your posts. I was curious about your journey. I take it you are some other country. How is it you came to live in Japan? The medical treatment there is so very different! I lived in the countryside and I’ll never forget the rusty ahh stick! I hope you are blessed with the child you want so much to love! Hugs.

Thank you so much. I really hope so too. Yeah I’m from America. Health care is quite different here compared to there. There is little privacy here and Japanese doctors lack bedside manner. I came to Japan the same way many foreigners did, to teach English but I didn’t want to leave once I got here and of course meeting my husband solidified that feeling.

Oh yes. The bedside lack of manners! The doctors always provided some crazy “wives tale” sort of advice (like I should drink beer for my stomach problems) that made you wonder how much they really studied! That must be particularly annoying at this time. I want to keep up with your story the blog.